1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of automatic telephone call distributors and, more particularly, to an automatic call distributor with an automatic voice message announcement system.
2. Description of the Related Art Including Information Disclosed Under 37 C.F.R. Section 1.97-1.99
Automatic call distributors employing a multiport switch controlled by a central processing unit for selectively interconnecting a plurality of agent sets, each having a telephone, with customer telephonic sets of an external telephonic switching system are well known. Examples of such call distributors are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,268,903 of Jones et al. entitled "Multichannel Telephonic Switching Network With Different Signaling Formats and Connect/PBX Treatment Selectable For Each Channel", issued Dec. 7, 1993; U.S. Pat. No. 5,140,611 of Jones et al. entitled "Pulse Modulated Self-Clocking and Self-Synchronizing Data Transmission and Method for a Telephonic Communication Switching System", issued Aug. 18, 1992; U.S. Pat. No. 5,127,004 of Lenihan et al. entitled "Tone and Announcement Message Code Generator for a Telephonic Switching System and Method", issued Jun. 30, 1992 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,627,047 of Pitroda et al. entitled "Integrated Voice and Data Telecommunications Switching System", issued Dec. 2, 1986.
Automatic call distributors are often employed in a telemarketing environment in which agents stationed at agent sets answer many different types of calls from customers during a work day. In these known systems the agent receives information about the type of customer call on a visual display at the agent set when a call is distributed to the agent. The agent reads the information on the display to determine what type of call (i.e. sales, inventory, customer support, billing, etc.) he is receiving. When concluding a call the agent speaks a farewell phrase which is usually specific to the type of call being serviced. For example, an agent may conclude a call with the phrase "Thank you for calling customer service, have a nice day." Furthermore, the same agent may also answer calls on a different application such as product information and present the caller with a standard concluding comment of "Your order is being processed. Thank you for your interest in our products, goodbye".
The accumulative time, however, spent speaking the concluding remarks for a telephone call decreases the number of calls, and thus the overall efficiency of the agents, due to the large number of calls handled during a work shift. In order to increase agent efficiency, known distribution systems, such as those for a telephone directory assistance application, provide a computer synthesized voice which provides callers the telephone directory number they are requesting instead of the agent or operator speaking the phrase. Such systems, through, are limited to this singular application spoken by a computer controlled voice which is different than the voice of the agent which received the call. The customer is certainly aware that the synthesized voice is not of the servicing agent. The customer frequently becomes annoyed by this impersonal communication since it is obvious to the calling customer that the agent did not show the courtesy of personally concluding the call. Furthermore, these types of known systems physically transfer the caller into another call processing system such as a voice response unit, which plays the computer generated announcement, thus requiring additional equipment to process the call. Moveover, these systems do not provide a capability of call handling by a multiplicity of agents. Only a singular type of computer generated response is given during the disconnection and thus the concluding comments cannot be personally tailored to the particular type of customer call.
Likewise, to help relieve the burden on agents of repeating the same standard phrase hundreds of times during a work shift, known call distribution systems play a prerecorded voice message which is played as a preannouncement greeting to calling customers. Such announcement messages played prior to a conversation between a customer and agent. Disadvantageously, these known preannouncement systems require a telephonic call between the customer and agent to be connected while the greeting message is being played. Such preannouncement systems do not significantly increase the overall call servicing efficiency since the agent must be connected to the call while the prerecorded greeting is being played. Therefore, the agent is restricted from servicing other calls during the playing period of the preconversation greeting.